MINTO – Council here has endorsed a resolution calling on the Ontario government to require all school buses to have stop-arm cameras installed and paid for by the province for the start of the 2023-24 school year.
The resolution, which originated with the Municipality of North Perth, was forwarded to the town by the Township of Howick, which has also endorsed it.
The resolution also calls on the province to underwrite the costs for the implementation and ongoing annual costs for “administrative monetary penalties” in small and rural municipalities.
Minto Mayor Dave Turton expressed support for the resolution at the April 4 council meeting.
“From what I’ve heard at numerous meetings, people are passing buses going both ways. The arm’s out and you’re supposed to stop and people aren’t,” Turton stated.
“So the resolution has to do with putting cameras on those arms … I believe this started at in North Perth and now Howick has endorsed it and I’d appreciate it if we could do it as well.”
North Perth’s resolution notes almost 824,000 students travel in about 16,000 school vehicles every school day in Ontario.
“According to the Ministry of Transportation’s statistics the rate of vehicles blowing by stopped school buses is over 30,000 times every day,” the resolution states.
The resolution also points out the administrative and financial costs to establish the required municipal administrative penalty program under the Highway Traffic Act “maybe out of reach for small or rural municipalities that have insufficient amounts of traffic to generate the required funds to offset the annual operational costs” of the program.
Council passed a motion to receive the correspondence from Howick and endorsed the resolution from North Perth.
The motion directs staff to circulate a letter, advising of the towns’ position, to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Attorney General Doug Downey, Minister of Education Steven Lecce, provincial opposition parties, Perth-Wellington MPP Matthew Rae and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.
At its Feb. 14 meeting, the Upper Grand District School Board agreed to ask the province to consider installing stop-arm cameras on school buses.
In 2020 the Canadian Task Force on School Bus Safety recommended “all jurisdictions explore the application” of additional safety measures including infraction cameras, extended stop-arms, exterior 360 cameras and automatic emergency braking.
The Task Force’s 2020 report states that stop-arm cameras “help prevent dangerous incidents caused by passing motorists.”
